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The concept that Saturn's rings are made up of a series of tiny ringlets can be traced to Pierre-Simon Laplace, [4] although true gaps are few – it is more correct to think of the rings as an annular disk with concentric local maxima and minima in density and brightness. [2] On the scale of the clumps within the rings there is much empty space.
The rings are named alphabetically in the order in which they were discovered. The main rings are A, B and C, with D, E and F being more recently discovered. There is also a very faint ring in the ...
An artist's impression of Rhea's rings. The density of the particles is exaggerated greatly to aid visibility. [1] Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, may have a tenuous ring system consisting of three narrow, relatively dense bands within a particulate disk. This would be the first discovery of rings around a moon.
Fainter planetary rings can form as a result of meteoroid impacts with moons orbiting around the planet or, in the case of Saturn's E-ring, the ejecta of cryovolcanic material. [6] [7] Ring systems may form around centaurs when they are tidally disrupted in a close encounter (within 0.4 to 0.8 times the Roche limit) with a giant
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Saturn’s rings are seen as viewed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which obtained the images that comprise this mosaic at a distance of approximately 450,000 miles from Saturn April 25, 2007.
[18] [36] Its faint apparent magnitude (H V = +11.7) and its proximity to the much brighter Saturn and Saturn's rings make Enceladus difficult to observe from Earth with smaller telescopes. Like many satellites of Saturn discovered prior to the Space Age, Enceladus was first observed during a Saturnian equinox, when Earth is within the ring plane.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first near-infrared observation of Saturn, highlighting details in the planet’s atmosphere and rings. Saturn’s rings shine in new Webb ...